Overscore
by Yoshiyuki Ly
Summary: Gabranth offers his pen instead to tell Fran of how she convinced him to betray an Empire for her.


I.

Twists of words, so close to mine; outrages  
Won and lost—our verisimilitude  
Inspired praise: spectators wrote pages  
Of our meeting, yet the truth did elude.  
And so set the stage, they did: intertwined  
Minds who lived with different eyes recorded  
The same; ones who drank polar sets of wine  
Preferred the same, as our tongues reported;  
Monologues as action act as boredom:  
We who live such separate lives—Wood, Empire:  
We should not share this. You have your freedom,  
I have my solitude in serving sires;  
Your ears did seek me out, long as they are,  
Hardening me with senses; how you marred.

II.

Depths of your body overwhelmed, betrayed  
Mine into such thoughts of submerging my  
Secrets unto yours, when I should delay  
This heresy, execute it—all lies,  
For I wanted naught else but to escape  
Into your history, learn how the winds  
Shaped the sharpness of your curves, and to take  
The elusive reigns of your skin, your limbs;  
Steel darker than light invites such brilliance,  
For your manner beckons to none, lifted  
By your heels, steels of eyes shattered millions  
Of those lesser men not at all gifted;  
I dared not compare myself—not aloud,  
Not until acceptance bent me, avowed.

III.

Such power you command in your quietude,  
To never arouse to typical states  
I would wish to stop; yet my aptitude  
For harshness may otherwise want to say:  
Your carefulness cut me as skeptical  
When never before could I care for such  
Contradictions in a woman; and all  
Your forwardness cut off too soon, too much,  
In a rush that blinded me in a rage  
I recognized not, knew not to dispel,  
And it drove me far, wide, beyond my sage  
Control, and into yours. Illusions quell  
These notions, indisputable as they  
Are: question not the heat of your sun's rays.

IV.

Quelling this ruse proved simple when I wished:  
This canvas of your control had to break  
Before I broke, splinter before I did;  
As my selfishness dictated, your make  
Could never satisfy me—your charming  
Ways, your cleverness could not breach my walls;  
Foolish to fortify fears slithering  
Slight enough to slit my throat with your calls;  
How I bled in silence with no red spilled,  
For I knew you did the same—I cared not,  
Though I ached too much to think or to will  
With clarity for how your heart did rot.  
Blind and seeing, numb and feeling—this I  
Am guilty of: lacking taste, vanished eyes.

V.

Such deep-set eyes I possess, for they have  
Fallen into yours, my sockets freshly  
Darkened only by my helm, and this salve  
Of iron you must drink swiftly, deftly  
If you wish to know why it is I serve  
Archades and its men: for though 'tis you  
I prefer, I cannot live without nerves  
Stifling under the heat of many clues  
To follow, an order to fulfill as  
I ignore the calls of my flesh that  
Call me back to betrayal that had passed,  
And invoked me to states primal—fall flat  
To barbarism and make no progress;  
Fall to you, for you, and make this caress.

VI.

And here I ramble on of my efforts  
To shut you out, clamping steel over sense,  
When it is you nature cannot order  
To stay away from me—skies as a lens,  
As one, monitoring me, that I should  
Act accordingly as a man smitten  
By the one whom my superiors hate,  
As do these stories come to pass, written  
The same, acted out with variety;  
And here I speak on of tales, Empires,  
When none hold me as you do—sublimely,  
With compassion, all, collected, required:  
Hold me to parchment as I describe your  
Manner instead; your body I do tour.

VII.

Tear away time as reason why I do  
Perceive you as my statue of young age  
Whose wisdom carves in me reminders, too,  
Of when and where I need be, on which page  
I left off on the night before, reading  
You as the tome you are, ripe with endless  
Intelligence, possibilities  
To gain, simply by breathing you senseless;  
When I learned there was yet something in you  
To break, pages to tear, to whet with wet,  
I held myself with false piety true,  
Swearing I would not dream of your pain yet.  
That breaking, around me—the description,  
I delay. Others require decryption.

VIII.

Recall the one who edged too close to your  
Breaking, the one whom I ignore too close  
To consider a man of worth—sour  
Your memory of him, again; this dose  
I will provide of my ill toward him,  
For hurting you when it was not his place;  
Your face we have both handled—he at brim,  
Me at sin, devilish, sharp as a mace,  
Yet I hold no cause for such repentance;  
As you do, to me, belong, only I  
Hold this scythe close to your throat as my chance  
To end all, be all—and here it stays, dyed  
With force of will, power to suffice, stop;  
Your hatred, I hold—I'll not spill a drop.

IX.

By the same, other women believe they  
Require me, of me, such that have  
Discarded notions of your victory  
Inevitable—all of them, how daft  
They are to think this chain breakable, though,  
I blame my neutrality in tone, wont  
To keep my pride with strangers, to not show  
My conflict in keeping you above all.  
Our history, my pen has brushed but slight;  
I can think of few ways to show all of  
Ivalice how I choose its freedom: flight  
Over blights of others I simply shove  
Into oceans of resentment I warned  
They would fall in, for me; for you, to warm.

X.

Touches of sadism find you at times  
Strange, to me: unexpected—and you call  
To me with nails sharpened, and venom pines  
For those tips, digging into me to maul  
My pride with the deftest of touches: how  
You whisper your vengeance, ill of my same  
Refusals, yet here I kneel, and bend, now,  
Collecting lost time at your feet—my name  
Is what you wish of me in these moments,  
And how I wish these might upend my flawed  
Sight that knows not always your punishments  
You desire to dole—compassion clawed  
Mine eyes wide with obscurity; forget  
Your crimson, I did—bent knees can beget.

XI.

In the shadows we hid, and you I did—  
All, everywhere, such time spent in nothing  
That I lost all crevices of my last  
Honor, wandering away, as we sing  
To the nights we conjured in such plain sight;  
Others, more obscured, you had here your soft  
Of cloth, soaked entirely of words light,  
Others firm, knocks not of people or lofts.  
There I learned why scandals succeed, and why  
They cannot be hidden—for I had pledged  
My services to a nation, when my  
Being taught me where I belong: here, wedged  
Between your thighs, nestled, or savoring;  
Highest cannot keep me from your needing.

XII.

From Rabanastre, to Nabudis, to  
Far beyond where Ivalice has taken  
Both you and I, or had me vagrant: new  
I've become, and Empire forsaken  
All for the call of your heart, chaining me  
To you, following through Lord Larsa, as  
He so ordered, knowing me, well to see  
The seas I crossed for you, and all the paths  
I yet opened, brewing wars and illness;  
Empire betrayed, I sought to lift you,  
Convincing of new honor: sickness  
In me that I would topple the gods true,  
In your name, defying old stagnancy:  
Could you believe me? My apologies.


End file.
